Johnson & Johnson board member Dr. Mark McClellan says the company expects 20 million doses to be delivered by the end of March, as the United States is one step closer to adding a third safe and effective vaccine to its arsenal.
“There will be a ramp-up period, so 4 million doses are expected next week, increasing during the month of March with 20 million doses delivered by the end of March,” the former FDA commissioner said in an interview. Friday night. “The news with Shepard Smith.” “So there are 20 million people fully vaccinated, since it is just one dose of the vaccine.”
A panel of advisers from the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Friday to recommend Johnson & Johnson’s single dose injection for emergency use authorization. The FDA will decide on Saturday whether to approve the vaccine. A recommendation from advisers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention would activate three to four million doses to be dispatched next week.
McClellan told The News with Shepard Smith that the addition of the J&J vaccine will represent a major step forward for the United States in terms of addressing the coronavirus pandemic and protecting millions of people from the virus.
“This comes in addition to some expansions in the supply of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, they expect close to 90 million, 100 million doses … it is a two-dose vaccine, but all of this together means that we could reach up to 100 million people or more vaccinated by the end of March here in the United States, “said McClellan, a health policy expert at Duke University.
Across the country, the average daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been declining for weeks, but the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, said the recent falls may be stabilizing.
“We can end the virus, but clearly the virus did not end with us,” said Walensky. “We cannot be comfortable or give in to a false sense of security that the worst of the pandemic is over. Not now, not when mass vaccination is so close”
The CDC director added that we could be starting to see the effects of the new and more contagious variants of Covid spreading across the country. McClellan agreed with Walensky and warned that “we should be concerned” when it comes to the new variants, but doubled the importance of vaccines.
“The good news is that vaccines seem to provide really strong protection against variants, the best way to contain variants is to vaccinate as many people as possible,” said McClellan.